Who We Are — Song Sessions

Flutist Isabel Lepanto Gleicher is a soloist, chamber musician and educator. Enjoying an international career, Isabel performs throughout Europe, China, Japan, Canada and the United States. *The New York Times* has called her “excellent” and John Zorn writes “Isabel’s display of virtuosity and her beautiful attitude and stunning musicality inspired me”. Isabel is an artist member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), new music sinfonietta Ensemble Echappe, the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, and hip-hop band ShoutHouse. She is a founding member of woodwind quintet SoundMind. Her project *Song Sessions,* alongside clarinetist Eric Umble, and composer Barry Sharp received a 2019 New Music USA grant. Isabel performs with ensembles such as wild Up, Talea Ensemble, the Argento New Music Project, Contemporaneous, Imani Winds and Friends of MATA Ensemble. As part of these and other groups, Isabel has had the opportunity to premiere works by Steve Reich, Missy Mazzoli, John Zorn, Beat Furrer, Augusta Read Thomas, and Dai Fujikura among others. She also performs at festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Big Ears, Opera Omaha’s One Festival, Sacrum Profanum Festival, MATA, Prototype Festival, Resonant Bodies, New Haven Arts and Ideas, Lake George Summer Music Festival and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Isabel has appeared on the Guggenheim Museum Works and Process Series, Music of the Americas Society Composer Portrait Series, Park Avenue Armory Martin Creed *The Back Door* exhibit, the Clark Institute of Art Celebration of Helen Frankenthaler and the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual event *An Afternoon of Music and Ar*t.
As a soloist, Isabel has been featured in a solo recital on Miller Theatre’s Pop Up series. She has also collaborated with So Percussion on a performance of Lou Harrison’s *Flute Concerto* at the Kennedy Center and with the Aizuri Quartet on a portrait recording of music by composer Ilari Kaila. Isabel won first prize at the Myrna Brown Young Artist Competition at the Texas Flute Festival in 2015 as well as placing second prize at both the South Carolina and Kentucky Flute Festival Young Artist Competitions in 2012. You can hear Isabel featured on several recordings ranging a variety of genres: composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s *Aequa* released on Sono Luminus, hip-hop band ShoutHouse’s *CityScapes* released on New Amsterdam, and Indie rock band San Fermin’s *Jackrabbit* released on Downtown Records.
Active as a teaching artist Isabel works with the Bridge Arts Ensemble in the Adirondacks and the American Composers Orchestra at Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton High School. She held a one year position with New York Philharmonic Education as a teaching artist apprentice, teaching 3rd grade. Isabel has conducted flute and chamber music master classes, and workshops in experimental music at the University of Nebraska, SUNY Purchase, DePauw University, University of Massachusetts and at the Texas Flute Festival. She has also collaborated with many composition departments, performing young student composers’ pieces from the Third Street Music School Settlement, Face the Music, Luna Composition Lab, the Music Advancement Program at the Juilliard School and the Very Young Composers program at the New York Philharmonic. Isabel, alongside her colleagues in ICE, is guest faculty at the Walden School Music Camp. Isabel holds an MM in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, an MM from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. Her primary teachers have included Tara Helen O’Connor, Ransom Wilson and Tanya Dusevic Witek.

Eric Umble is a versatile, award winning clarinetist hailed as lovely by New York Arts, and known for his "... nuanced and coloristic playing." (The Clarinet). Eric enjoys a diverse international career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player, and music educator. An advocate for and avid performer of contemporary music, he is founding member of SoundMind, sTem, DuoHelix, Wavefield, and Pink Noise ensembles; all champion music by living composers.Eric served as clarinetist in residence at Chamber Music Silicon Valley, the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, and New Music on the Point. He has performed with renowned ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Orchestras of the Lucerne Festival Academy and Alumni, The London Symphony Orchestra, the WindScape Quintet, American Modern Ensemble, LoftOpera, ECCE, Tenth Intervention, Cantata Profana, Ensemble Echappee, Contemporaneous, and Ensemble Mise-en. Eric has performed in the world's major venues including Carnegie's Stern Auditorium, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Roulette, and National Sawdust in New York; as well as Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, the Berlin, Paris, and Köln Philharmonies, and the Oil Tank Culture Park in Seoul, South Korea. Eric has participated in residencies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as Princeton, Cornell, Millersville, Miami, and Sul Ross State, Universities.Dedicated to using music as a force for positive change, Eric produced benefit concerts that raised thousands of dollars for public health, shelters, and disaster relief. He has received awards and honors including the grand prize of the Naftzger Young Artist Competition, Lancaster Red Rose Award for Community Service, Gordon Parks Memorial Competition, Skokie Valley Young Artist Competition, and the Fuchs Chamber Music Competition. As an educator, Eric is a teaching artist with the Bridge Arts Ensemble, and he is a Music Theory teacher at the Washington Heights Community Conservatory in Manhattan. He enjoys relationships with the Escuela Nacional de Música in Mexico City and Casa de Las Américas in Havana, Cuba where he has presented numerous lectures, masterclasses, and recitals. Eric studied with Stephanie Zelnick, David Krakauer, and Anthony McGill. He received Bachelors and Masters degrees from Manhattan School of Music.

Barry Sharp is a Philadelphia-based composer and musician. His work often develops from a specific sound world from which he sculpts a landscape of harmonies, melodies, and textures. He is also interested in how musical experiences vary between performers and listeners, given the way these landscapes are constructed and executed versus how they are perceived. Barry has worked with ensembles such as Duo Helix, Amalgama, sTem, JACK Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Bienen Early/Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, [Switch~ Ensemble], Arditti Quartet, the Princeton Singers, OSSIA Ensemble, Un/Pitched, Ithaca New Music Collective, Cornell Orchestras, and the Cornell Chamber Singers.

Barry enjoys collaborations with musicians as well as artists of different backgrounds. He performs with composer Sergio Cote in the experimental duo etc, [ee-tea-see]. Their sound-based-experimental-performance-art involves creating pieces through an experimental, rebellious, and democratic approach to sound. He is authoring an ongoing project with Eric Umble (clarinet) and Isabel Lepanto-Gleicher (flute), Song Sessions, that derives compositional frameworks from the songs of humpback whales. The project was awarded a grant from New Music USA in 2019 and a residency at MISE-EN_Place, Bushwick in 2018. Another collaboration, Hear me, grew out of an exchange with architect Min Keun Park, the Cornell Chamber Orchestra, and Chris Kim (conductor). The project received a grant from the Cornell Council for the Arts for the 2016-2017 biennial.

Barry received his D.M.A. in composition from Cornell University where he studied with Kevin Ernste, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, and Roberto Sierra. He also holds degrees in music from Murray State University (B.M.) and the University of Iowa (M.A.). Barry currently works as a dog handler and dog walker in South Philadelphia.